|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
196.215.25.87
I have a pair of Tannoy 12" dual-concentric drivers, as used in the D900 and I am looking for the plans for a suitable cabinet. I have found designs that date back to the 1970's for the HPD315 drivers, but their big, square looks do not suit my room. The tall, thin cabinets of the D900 and Dimension range are what I am after.
Can anybody point me at some plans for these?
I have found reference to a suitable design by the Mc Donald brothers of Canada (circa 2000) but no actual plans.
Follow Ups:
Hi
This will sound like it begs the question, but having been there, I think it's worth saying.
When I built cabs for Tannoy 12" Monitor Golds my thought about cabinet shape was like yours, and many people have the same thought. Couldn't the newly made enclosures be a more modern profile, a tall narrow sort of design that fits with a modern listening room look ? More like modern 'column' speakers ? Why do they have to be wide-baffle boxes ?
Well, because a 12" wide dispersion dual concentric is meant to have a significant baffle surround; I'm not an authority on wave-launch etc, but the Tannoy people were, and they tended toward just that-- a significantly wide baffle on a large box.
Having tried it, I don't think the limited perceived benefit is worth trying to retrofit a design that uses a wide-profile box (browse the leaflet online for the Tannoy Prestige Series of today and note the profiles) and then trying to diagnose and remedy the side effects. Large drivers like the monitor golds need space behind the baffle as well; no internal speaker wall should be a mere couple of inches from the rear of the cone--- or they easily become boomy and blurred in the lower mids & bass.
Just saying it's been tried, by many, and it can be done, but it's a squeeze and a compromise. Why not suit the driver design instead ?
Look at the DeVore and Harbeth lines for the kind of wide baffle cabinets that look classic, and still allow the driver to do as it was designed to do. Your call of course.
You raise some thought-provoking points there, Blinx7 - thank you. But by and large, I think they apply more to the paper-coned drive units, designed for maximum efficiency for use with low-powered amplifiers. The polypropylene-coned DC-3139's that I have are different. In the D900 cabinets, there is only 15mm from the edge of the speaker to the edge of the baffle and I suspect that is about as close as you can go while still maintaining structural rigidity.
The D900 is a great-sounding speaker and the harder you push it, the better it copes. By contrast, the "old school" HPD315's that I had in Tannoy-designed big-baffle boxes could not cope with high-power material, making them less suitable all-rounders - particularly when home-theatre enters the mix.
That is why I am searching hard for a D900-style cabinet.
Hey, my mistake, andre. I had indeed been referencing the HPD/Monitor-Gold style of more efficient paperconed monitors (and that's what my cab-building experience is with).
But I might point out that there are two separate kinds of things being discussed, regardless. Or maybe two equally credible lines of thought.
Your end seems maybe closer to home theater, or even pro sound-reinforcement thinking-- separate the frequencies, drive the various freq ranges hard, use whatever electronics or multiple drivers + crossover elements you need, to create a big, multi-source sound. All-rounders, as you say, fit to do the thundering crashes and sound effects in HT or very large-scale music.
From my (short-signal-path, least-in-the-way, fewest-drivers/less-xover/no-sub) kind of perspective it's really only music that is in question, and probably not more than 30hz-18khz anyway. In my view the more integrity the program material has at low volumes-- the bigger of a win, because you can use less tonnage of electronics in the path, fewer components, fewer strategies like neg-feedback or psu filtering & regulation. Vacuum tubes for some parts of the system, transformer-volume-controls, simple circuitry, simple psu's.
On my side of the divide, if you have to push anything hard and then super-damp or loop-feedback or filter it to control it, you're not getting it right. Once you build inefficient drivers into tight, narrow-baffled close-walled pillars, you'll be needing to damp the insides extravagantly to kill reflections, and yes, drive them hard with hundreds of watts to get spls back out of that damped interior.
To my ear, subjectively, the lack of frontage on the narrow baffle wins some battles and loses others. Imaging and disappearing-as-source are the wins, no question; so again, in HT, exactly the ticket. Fullness and organic timbre seem to be the losses. Pillars always seem to suit that kind of electric-bass lounge jazz thing better than they do an acoustic strings-&-woodwinds vibe. Subjective, but maybe it's not just me.
From your side, I suppose, why not divide and conquer, use as much tech as gets the job done and have some overage to spare. Why concern the design with getting all things right when you can cater to those things with auxiliary parts of the system (like multi-drivers, supertweets & subs, for example).
I guess I just wanted to assert that drivers like old-school tannoys, lowthers, etc make sense not because efficiency is required by incompetent amplifiers, but because efficiency complements simple, short-signal-path systems that are inherently low-watt.
Anyway, best of luck with the D900 plans, wish I could have been more help.
Thanks, Blinx - once again, a thought-provoking response. After mulling it over, I conclude that correctly reproducing sound is a higher objective in hi-fi terms than reproducing music.
I say that respectfully within a forum like this, where vague platitudes like "it's all about the music" are not unusual. Without intending offense, I hastily add that my objection is not with the sentiment of the statement, but with its implementation - what is music?
If music were simply "strings and pipes" instruments, I would agree with the philosophy of your setup, but when you include the equally valid percussion and high-dynamic-range scenario, without losing sight of equally valid non-musical terms like transparency, parameters need to be re-evaluated. That is where I am right now.
Personally, my first point of discontent with the "old-school sound" was with the amplifiers. Bipolar amps sounded slow; FET's were "tizzy" and valves/tubes fussy - a lifetime of frustration punctuated by moments of bliss. Mark Alexander's groundbreaking work on current feedback amplifiers really worked for me. Having found my holy grail of amplification, I boldly entered the realm of electrostatic speakers and its many untapped treasures.
That is what my main system consists of now.
While the electrostatics deliver abundantly in many areas, they are not without problems of their own.
Furthermore, I cannot help but feel that I can get the Tannoys to perform better than I have been able to in the past.
But, I am not going into this project blindly. I am acutely aware that Tannoy can and do produce exceptional cabinets. I want to start from their base of good work and devote my attention to an active system, where I feel a lot more comfortable.
Tonight, I will be setting up a listening room with a pair of D900's and a pair of S10's. Regrettably, the drivers are not identical in the two ranges, but they are of the same family, but the cabinets have very different designs, which is my point of interest.
I am just going to start by listening to music and see where that takes me with my cabinet quest.
{ from the previous... Re my musical examples of pillar-columns vs wide-boxes-- electric-bass-lounge-jazz versus woody-strings-and-winds, well. On a completely primitive level that makes some sense, doesn’t it. An electric bass is a narrow board of completely rigid material that generates its sound via complex electric pickup system. Much like multi-driver pillars with elaborate xovers. As for the wide-wooden-box profile, what does that resemble but something like a cello or double-bass, a woody soundbox after all .... Sometimes an ‘obvious’ comparison isn’t so wrong ... }
____
Thanks A, for your post. On your point of reproducing music versus reproducing sound, well, two things. First is that I completely agree with your reluctance to accept the platitude of ‘it’s all about the music’, especially when repeatedly, fervently intoned on Audio boards; generally an audio board statement of same is followed by a rapt appreciation of some brainless demo material or played-til-dead warhorse-recording. Of that, enough.
The second, though, is that I agree with your assessment in the big picture. It is more difficult to reproduce Sound than just Music; that’s built into the definition, in that music is only a subset of the larger category. But you’re right, even if you flatten all the variables, there is much more to the discussion and the definitions & guidelines of sound reproduction.
I would venture, though, that the rules are a little bit different for the two kinds of discussions. While there is a broad Arts + Sciences umbrella to cover the Sound reproduction discussion, it leans to the science. Whereas, in Music, the arts-and-literature, history, tradition and culture aspects take up, easily, a good half of the discussion; with different descriptors, different metrics for successful outcomes.
And here is where the parting of the ways is clearer. For a musical venture, it may well be that the examination of the original text-- the Recording, in this case-- is the ultimate and indisputable aim. That to eq, vary, rematerialize, reinforce or diverge in any way from the values in the recording ---is a false path. No matter that a tube system may render more lifelike harmonics, or that a high-current electrostatic system may pressurize the room more impressively--- if reproduction diverges from the text, it’s wrong.
Since we’re all adults, though, it’s worth noting that nothing is perfect, that there is distortion and variability in all systems, and in the end, even with rigorous approaches, it really just comes to what seems more believable. Or to which may exhibit the fewer obvious glitches or ‘fudges’.
Trying for a minute to get outside of the regular ruts these things run in, I would opine that new ‘versions’ –new to oneself-- of sound playback systems (whether open baffles or stats, dual concentrics or mass-arrays of small drivers, triode, pushpull, SET, SIT, Mosfet or current-feedback)--- are beguiling for maybe just a bit longer than it takes to completely immerse and “get” the trick. During which time the blissed-out listener swims thru new discoveries, universes of music—both new and previously visited material. After which you start to hear the trick, not the program material.
b7
ps thnx for the tip on current-feedback, on which I'm happily reading up...
Look at Hilberink.nl/speaker Tannoy Monitor Gold website, there are DIY
cabinets that might help.My attempt to post a link failed, sorry...
Edits: 06/17/14
Thank you, Doug, I have been through all of the plans and ideas there, but nothing excites me. Thee are some properly designed cabinets with dimensions and bracing instructions, but they are old designs, typically from the 70's. Firstly, their "short and fat" proportions do not suit my room, and second, they do not suit the low-diffraction, high resolution design that I am looking for. I have already built a pair of high-bandwidth, current feedback power amps which drive the newer Tannoy dual-concentrics extremely well in a bi-amped configuration (tested on S10's and D900's). I have the speakers (Tannoy 12" DC3139's), the cabinet must come next, then I want to make the configuration active.
If you go to a tall thin cabinet, you will probably need baffle step compensation.
Dave
Thanks, Dave and agreed - I may well do. But, if Tannoy have been clever in their original cabinet design on the Definition and Dimension range, the compensation point may coincide with the crossover point with the tweeter, effectively eliminating the need for compensation. That would explain the very simple crossover that is used in the D900 compared with, say, the System 12/1200 DMT, which uses the same drivers, and would also explain the improvement in sound over the System 12/1200.
But really, I will not know until I build a cabinet and test it. I do see that Texas Instruments recently published an active crossover design which makes such compensation easy to add, so I am not too concerned about it at the moment.
It sound like you should get a copy of Base Box Pro and design your own cabinet.
Dave
You may want to ask this in the High Efficiency asylum.
Post a Followup:
FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: